


Warriors

by Seta_Kaita



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Birthday gift for Sorran, M/M, Mild Rickyl, Rickyl Writers' Group, Yes it's a goddamn songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 10:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5703859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seta_Kaita/pseuds/Seta_Kaita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick and Daryl couldn't have grown up more differently if they'd tried, but they share the belief that the world shouldn't be how it is. Now, in the apocalypse, they have the chance to change that.</p><p>A birthday fic for lovely Sorran.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warriors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sorran](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorran/gifts).



> As usual, the wonderful Michelle_A_Emerlind has done my beta-ing and editing. Thank you, MAE!
> 
> The song to this fic is Warriors by Imagine Dragons.
> 
> This is a gift to Sorran for her birthday. May you have many more and may this new year bring you better times and the happiness you deserve! Happy Birthday! You rock!

Everyone who knew Daryl also knew he hadn’t had the best childhood. Some people would call it traumatic, others just bad. Funny enough, Daryl had never considered his childhood anything other than intense. He wouldn’t ever call it a childhood, either. On the rare occasions that he talked about it, he would say “when I was young”.

Yes, he had grown up in a dysfunctional family, with a drinking mother that burned the house down along with herself when Daryl was still so very young; with an abusive father that didn’t give a shit about his sons. And then there had been Daryl’s big brother and personal hero, who was even more broken than Daryl himself.

But the big difference between Merle and Daryl was how they coped with their past. While Merle did his best to wipe away reality from his consciousness with various drugs, trying to dull the pain and avoid thinking as much as he could, he was still a loudmouth that made his youth out to be a great tale of heroism where he had survived the dragon and fought like one hell of a man.

Daryl, on the other hand, never mentioned what had happened to him. He didn’t see his father as someone to survive, the abuse as something to bury in the back of his mind. For him, it had been part of growing up, of becoming strong and knowing how to handle pain and violence. His father had inadvertently taught him things like not to trust anyone, not to wait for a savior but to stand tall and fight for himself. Daryl had learned a lot about himself in those dark hours when he had sat in his room, tending to the wounds his father’s belt had left. He learned his limits very early on; along with that came the will to push them as far as he could. Unlike the other kids, he didn’t get to lie in a warm bed at night and get tucked in by loving parents. Instead, he would watch those perfect families from far away and wait for his time to come. Unlike other kids, he knew he’d always be the one to work while they all played.

So instead of hiding from what was happening to him, he faced it, lived through it and never forgot.

 

\---***---

 

Rick had been one of those kids with a loving family. He had grown up never wanting for anything. But he had still been raised to be humble and grateful for what life gave him. He knew the he was privileged and never took anything for granted. He knew that there were kids growing up with nothing but the clothes on their backs and hunger in their bellies. His sense of right and wrong was one of the first things he developed in his childhood and it was so impeccable that it was the one great constant in his life.

In his youth, when he had grown old enough to start seeing the grand scheme of things, he would see injustice around every corner and it would stoke the angry flames in him that he never showed and thus never learned to conquer. He would lay awake at night and scheme of all the things that he would change when he grew up.

But when he became an adult, he noticed very soon that it had just been a dream.

 

\---***---

 

Here they were now, at the end of the world, two men without illusions. One of them too good to accept it the way it was and wishing so bad he could change it. And one who knew that to be a pipedream and had come to terms with that a long, long time ago.

Here they were now, two warriors hoping to making a difference now that the apocalypse had made that possible. Now that the foundations of society were crumbled, ashes and lost promises on the wind. And they would build their town from dust.

Because their time had come. The time when Rick would have to rise above the best and prove to himself and everyone that his spirit would never die. He left behind his wife and his best friend to build a new tomorrow; left them behind so they wouldn’t drag him down with their lack of trust in him. He bid them farewell to take his throne above. And he took Daryl with him to the top, took him by the hand, his right-hand man, and led him forward. He let the man step up to him, let him be his equal, because he knew he could. Because Daryl believed in him and he believed in Daryl like he had never believed in anything before.

Daryl stood by his side, unwavering and unrelenting, living proof of all the evil in the world and for the first time in a long while Rick felt like he might be able to save someone. But that someone wasn’t Daryl. Daryl didn’t need saving. That someone was Rick himself.

Rick would be safe from the world as long as this man was by his side.

They would stand above together, Rick and Daryl, the warriors that built this town. And he smiled at the people he left behind, telling them not to weep for him, because this was the labor of his love.

  
  
  
_Here we are, don't turn away, now._  
_We are the warriors that built this town._  
_From dust._


End file.
